Personal Branding and Social Media

And that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

That’s why I’m on social media, like Twitter and Facebook, so frequently. I want to show myself more, share my thoughts more, dive into personal conversations more, and build meaningful relationships. Especially with people who actually give a shit about what I write here – because, for all intents and purposes, they are the ones that keep me going. Thank you.

And that’s also why I’ve started recording videos on my YouTube channel. I want to show my face. I want to be more engaging outside of just digital text. That’s why I started recording videos a little over a month ago (now I’m up to 10) and that’s why I am going to continue with it. And even though I’m not the best public speaker, it strengthens my message. I think most people will watch me talk about this stuff and believe that I’m being honest and genuine. Mostly because I really do believe in what I say, so why should more transparency be a problem for me? It’s not. I’m ready to be judged. I’ve had people tell me I run a “shit blog” and that I believe in hocus pocus nonsense. I didn’t always have thick skin, but it grows thicker everyday.

And this “thick skin” actually plays a big role in what Gary Vaynerchuk has been advocating in his new book The Thank You Economy. Many business still don’t have the “thick skin” to use social media for anything more than a mini press-release. They are too afraid to read what their customers are saying about them, let alone actually respond to problems.

Any smart businessmen or entrepreneur should understand the goldmine of having access to what people say about your company. What better way can you find opportunities for growth and innovation? Not only that, but social media gives you the opportunity to solve problems in a public domain. If people can see you are putting in the extra mile, it matters. And as more and more companies begin utilizing social media, a new level of customer service is going to be expected.

Vaynerchuk’s book is captivating, thought-provoking, and strengthens a lot of the convictions I’ve had while trying to build “The Emotion Machine” (which is, yes, still a huge work-in-progress).

In the book, he talks about how business is coming around full circle. In the early days of markets and capitalism, there weren’t many corporations, but mostly “Mom and Pa” businesses – small and local businesses that thrived on building relationships and communities with their customers. But in today’s corporate world, businesses have become more depersonalized and detached from their consumers. People, in a sense, have been reduced to numbers. And the quality of relationships in business has declined. But social media is beginning to change that again:

“I believe that we are living through the early days of a dramatic cultural shift that is bringing us back full circle, and the world that we live and work in operates in a way which is surprisingly similar to the one our great-grandparents knew. Social media has transformed our world into one great big small town, dominated, as all vibrant towns used to be, by the strengths of relationships, the currency of caring, and the power of word of mouth.”

Books like Wired to Care have also emphasized a similar transformation in business. The author Dev Patnaik gives numerous case studies on the importance of empathy (or as Vaynerchuk refers to it -”currency of caring”) and how building a community around your brand is crucial for long-term success. This means, of course, listening and responding to the needs of the people in your community. Social media now gives us the tools to apply these principles at a scale never before possible.

According to Vaynerchuk, social media is now even more important than search engines or SEO – because search engines lack the social context needed for long-term businesses to succeed. Often we Google something, we click on a relevant link, get the information we need, and never visit the site again. But sites like Twitter and Facebook allow us to build a social context around our content and products. Social context builds trust and relationships. And when a product is referred to you by someone who you like and trust, the impact is much greater than when you receive that information from a site you just visited for the first time. Social media is changing the way consumers make decisions:

“A few months ago I was at Best Buy, and I watched as a teenager used his Facebook status to request recommendations on a Nintendo Wii game. He got feedback in real time, and used it to decide what to buy. Recommendations and contextual social search are the future. Is it any wonder I’m not bullshit on search engine optimization’s (SEO) long-term potential?”

In The Thank You Economy, Vaynerchuk also predicts that social engines are going to begin integrating sites like Facebook and Twitter. In the future, when you search “Nintendo Wii games” on Google, you are going to see tweets appearing at the top of your screen by people you follow who recently mentioned “Nintendo Wii games.” This is going to add tremendous social context to the information we now get off the internet. As a business, imagine how important it is today to start developing these relationships.

As I mentioned before, a lot of business still don’t have the slightest idea what social media is or how to use it. Gary mentions a recent article on Ad Age called “Most Brands Still Irrelevant on Twitter: Marketers Are Certainly Tweeting, but Users Are Barely Listening.”

“The article actually explains the problem: ‘While marketers such as Dell, Comcast, Ford, and Starbucks have been, at times, clever participants on Twitter, the majority of marketers use it as a mini press release service. Only 12% of messages from marketers are directed at individual users, meaning marketers still see it as a broadcasting medium rather than a conversational one.’ So you see, it’s not that Twitter doesn’t work; it’s that most brands aren’t using Twitter correctly. It’s like saying a trumpet is broken because the first hundred people who try to play it suck. You can’t have a relationship with someone if you won’t shut up and let him or her get a word in edgewise. Brands have to realize that it’s not all about them. When they do nothing but push product, there’s no reason for the consumer to say anything back. It’s like that friend you have who always talks about herself and never asks how you’re doing. Eventually, she gets tiresome, and you lose interest in keeping the relationship.”

Holy shit does this message ring true for me! I find so many businesses and brands on Twitter are not using it correctly at all. After reading the Thank You Economy, I’ve made a conscious effort to go through everyone I’m following on Twitter – and if I don’t see that “@” sign being used, I unfollow them, because they completely miss the point of social media.

When I use Facebook and Twitter, I try to respond back to anyone that shows the slightest interest in what I do. And if someone shares a link I say “thank you,” because the point of social media is that businesses need to start listening to other people and showing appreciation toward those who support them. Remember, we’re going back to a word of mouth economy, and simply broadcasting your message (jamming it down people’s throats without listening or engaging) is going to become more and more irrelevant. Again, consumers are going to start expecting more from the companies they do business with.

In business, it’s so important to start listening to people. Not just for closing sales, but for doing research into what people want and adjusting your business accordingly. The other day someone critiqued something I wrote in an article, I thought they had a good point, so I went in and edited my post. Hello? Social media is a tremendous tool for improving your content. Sometimes I ask people, “What do you want to know about X?” And I get replies and then shape my next blog post according to those demands. That’s also why I post polls on my sidebar and on Facebook. I want to know what other people think. As I mentioned before, social media gives you the chance to correct and improve on things within a public domain; and people will begin to notice that you take notice. It matters to them.

Yeah I know – I’m not the best “public speaker.” Actually, for most of my life I’ve hated it. But this blog isn’t about staying within the boundaries of the past, right? It’s about exploration, making mistakes, and learning to overcome those boundaries. This is just as much true for personal development as it is for professional development, working on your career, or running a business. I’ll get better (I promise)!

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Some say we have too many gadgets and too many distractions.

Our face-to-face interactions are constantly being interrupted by cellphones.

Students would rather spend time in class tweeting than following lectures.

And we can barely go 10-15 minutes at work without refreshing our Facebook.

Let’s face it – it’s nice to have the immediate gratification of connecting with whoever you want, whenever you want.

But now we might be addicted.

Are you aware of how often you check your phone for text messages?


Are you aware of how often you refresh Facebook?


Are you aware of how often you check your emails?


Are you aware of how often you tweet?


Are you aware of how disconnected you sometimes feel when your cellphone runs out of batteries?


Or you can’t get access to the internet for an entire week?

We can very easily get addicted to things that give us immediate gratification. It’s just like a drug. We don’t recognize how much we “need it,” until we no longer have it and experience the withdrawals. We crave connections, even digital ones.

So is social media a bad thing?

I’m not going to be one of those guys who thinks we need to get rid of electricity in order to find real happiness. I spend over 8 hours a day on the internet, it’s where all my work takes place, and I think many of the tools we sometimes abuse are actually incredibly useful and important to our social evolution.

We just need to use this technology more mindfully.

Mindfulness.

It’s a hot word in modern psychology and self improvement. It’s basically synonymous with “living in the moment” or being in flow.

Many would argue that these new technologies actually distract us from living in the moment, but I would argue that we can still be mindful while on Twitter, or Facebook, or on our iPhones (note: I don’t actually own one, although I wish I did).

So what does it mean to be mindful while Tweeting?

Can you be fully in your awareness as you click over to the Twitter tab, see an interesting tweet, and then decide to respond to it?

What about when your cursor moves over to the “refresh” button on Facebook?

Can you be more mindful of that urge to check your Twitter when you really should be studying for an exam or working on that new project?

Could you learn to have more self-discipline? More awareness of your actions as they unfold in the moment?

These are some questions you may want to consider, especially when you find yourself being constantly distracted by today’s technology.

Mindfulness and will power.

How can you be more mindful in the present moment? Well, you have to will it into action. You have to make the conscious effort and say to yourself:

“I will be more mindful.”

“I will pay more attention to what I am thinking, what I am doing, or what I am saying in the present moment.”

Remember, mindfulness is not something that only happens when we are sitting on the cushion meditating. It is a skill that should permeate everything we do. In the book Mindfulness in Plain English, the author stresses that we can be mindful of anything: breathing, walking, cooking, playing sports – it doesn’t matter.

It’s a state of awareness, not a physical action.

And the same awareness can be cultivated when we are tweeting or on social media.

But it takes practice, and it takes the willingness to practice. Mindfulness is a muscle that needs to be worked out. It’s not some magic tool that can be bought at a store or acquired through reading a book.

Be one with your tweet.

Be one with your tweet. It sounds kind of silly and zen-like right? But really all I mean is to concentrate your full attention on what is relevant in the present.

So often are minds are “divided” into different parts. We worry about one thing while doing another. We rarely have that one-pointedness where we are fully engaged in the action we are doing.

Want to see full engagement? Watch professional athletes while they play sports. Watch artists while they create. Watch a businessman while he is discussing a new idea. Those people are one with what they are doing while they are doing it. In that moment, there is nothing more important to them.

Can you imagine how such a state of mind could be beneficial? Even while tweeting?

When I tweet @NeuralCorrelate, I want to know exactly what I’m doing. I have 140 characters to send a message, what is it that I am trying to say?

How am I writing? Am I showing my personality? Am I acting like a machine or do I recognize that there are real people on the other end of those Twitter accounts?

The point of social media is to be social, right? Whether you are in business, or showing off your blog, or sharing your music, or just asking people how they are doing – the main goal here is to interact.

Are you acting like a person on social media? Or do you send automated tweets, generic quotes, or links to sales pages?

That might be something to be more mindful of. Ask yourself, “Am I using social media in the best way I could be? Am I fully engaged with the people I hope to connect with?”

“I like Twitter, but it makes me ADHD.”

If you’re more mindful when you tweet, you can better notice when you are being distracted, or when you actually have the free time to engage on Twitter.

There’s a middle ground between the two. On one hand, devoting attention to Twitter can be a very rewarding experience. On the other hand, always wanting to check your tweets can be a huge burden.

Mindfulness helps you distinguish between the two. It’s the difference between “I have some time to invest on Twitter” and “I really shouldn’t be doing this right now.”

Okay, so how do I cultivate this mindfulness?

Again, it takes some will-power and practice, but there are some tips you can try today to start improving:

• Spend 10-15 minutes meditating and watching your awareness.
• Decide on one task per day that you will be more mindful of.
• Identify some activities that you love and already experience flow doing.
• Recite an affirmation that “I will be more mindful.”
• Ask yourself the purpose or goal behind a certain action.
• Don’t be too hard on yourself when you get distracted.
• Write in a journal or blog about your mindfulness experiences.
• Keep practicing.

I hope you found some of this advice useful. Being more mindful of our actions can be an incredible agent for change and personal well-being (no matter what it is we are doing).